


The Beginning Of After

by Eternal Scribe (Shadowcat)



Category: Boondock Saints (Movies), Forbidden Game - L. J. Smith, The Forbidden Game - L. J. Smith
Genre: Crossover Pairings, Hearts and minds, Multi, Small Fandom Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 23:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/pseuds/Eternal%20Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenny Thornton has had access to two different alternate worlds from our own. When she is ripped away from the magical village and the two men she loved more than anything, she tried to find her way back to them. After it becomes evident that she won't be able to go back, Jenny returns to the world of her nightmares -- The Shadow World -- to repay a debt.</p>
<p>Connor and Murphy McManus had found the perfect girl for them and hadn't ever planned on giving her up. Once the real world intervenes and they get separated from her, the two brothers set out to find her again. When they get a hint from Jenny's cousin as to where she has been living, Connor and Murphy find themselves taking a trip straight into hell to retrieve their girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beginning Of After

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Round Two of Small Fandom Bang.
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful artist [Cazzy](http://sexycazzy.livejournal.com/162466.html).

Jenny opened her eyes and smiled as she snuggled back down in the bed. Connor was curled against her back with his arm over her waist and Murphy was against her front with his arm over her waist and his hand holding Connor’s arm. In this way, she was being held in a safe embrace by both of the men. Her own arms had been around Murphy while she slept and now, she moved one of them so she could find Connor’s hand.

The relationship she had with these two men was like nothing she had ever imagined when she was back home, but that made it even more special. The boys loved her and the love she felt for them in return was a powerful thing.

The fact that they had come looking for her when she disappeared meant the world to her, too. They hadn’t given up on her any more than she had given up on finding them. Not only that, they went into her own version of Hell to find her and bring her back where she belonged.

 

To think, it had all started with that very weird spell while they had been back in the Village. The spell that had somehow caused them to be magically bound together for an entire weekend – they couldn’t move very far away from each other without it causing themselves pain, suffocation and dizziness. The three of them had found a way to handle that weekend and it hadn’t taken long before they were inseparable.

Jenny couldn’t have been happier.

They spent their days working at their own jobs and then they would get together to spend evenings or weekends together. Sometimes they would go to a movie, or they would get take out and hang out in one of their rooms. They’d watch movies – adventures where the good guys always won – or they’d spend the evenings playing cards or teaching other new games. Later, they would seek one of the beds and spend their time exploring each other long into the night and the early morning.

Then the Village did its worst trick ever.

It was Jenny that disappeared from the Village first. It happened suddenly and without warning as she was walking from Patience and Paints to meet the brothers at the grocery store. She walked into the store and found herself fighting against Dee and Tom as they carried her away from the Shadow Men.

This time when she grieved for Julian, it was a deeper grief that she was dealing with. She felt crushed over the fact that she had been taken from the Village and she would never see Connor and Murphy again.

Coming home from the Village caused a change in Jenny. She was still the nice and good person she had been before, but there was a quiet sadness about her that she couldn’t shake. She and Tom drifted apart, while she and her cousin, Zach, drifted closer together. Dee and Audrey were as close to her as ever, but when she decided she wasn’t going to go to college right away it confused them all. Jenny had been all about getting a degree in something that would allow her to help as many people as possible.

After leaving Haurvatat, there was a lot that didn’t matter as much to Jenny any longer.

She needed to get away from California. She needed to go somewhere that she could live on her own and try to deal with all of her feelings over losing the two men she had fallen in love with. She needed to be alone so that she could heal and then she could start her life over again.

It didn’t take much thought for her to end up taking over her grandfather’s house in Pennsylvania. She was of age, now, and her parents, while hesitant to have her moving so far away, finally gave in and helped her get the house back into condition for occupancy.

Jenny immediately set about making the house into a home for herself. She turned one of the rooms into a studio for her to work on her art. She set up a few easels and a desk so that she could sketch and paint comfortably.

Her grandfather’s old room got cleaned out and his remaining things were packed up and stored in the basement. In the basement, she made sure the rune was still carved and then painted in on the door. She didn’t want any surprise visits from the Shadow World invading her world now that she had experienced so much.

She got a job nearby her home working in a small shop and in her free time, she sometimes did sketches at the festivals that were held every few months.

She found things to do to keep her mind occupied because after the first six months of trying to find her way back to the Village, she had finally given up. Wherever it was, it seemed that she was cut off from it for good. She was stuck back in her world and she had lost Connor and Murphy.

Jenny tried to deal with the pain of losing the men she loved by continued to eat at her in varying ways.

She went back to studying rune magic, determined that she was going to keep her promise to Julian. When she finished the stave, she was at loss as to how to make sure she got it to him. She came to a realization that there was only one way she could do this.

She had to return to the Shadow World and leave it someplace that he would feel it and be created back in his world by it.

She didn’t want to return to the Shadow World. The Shadow Men left their and their demonic helpers scared her and had given her nightmares for months after she lost Julian. The problem was, that just as she had owed her grandfather for giving his life to the demons when she was five, she owed it to Julian to bring him back to life after he was killed for protecting her from his brethren.

“I don’t want to go in there,” Jenny whispered to the latest painting of the McManus boys that she had just finished a few days earlier. “I’m afraid. Connor… Murphy… I know that you’re not here and that you can’t hear me, but I am so afraid of going back into the Shadow World. I’m afraid that this time, I won’t be able to get out of there alive. There’s only me this time and I’m not strong enough to fight them all on my own.”

Shaking her head and wiping her tears, Jenny started packing a backpack of supplies to take into the Shadow World with her. This time, she wasn’t leaving anything to chance. She didn’t know how long she would be in there, so she packed food and a couple of bottles of water. She packed a jacket and an extra shirt, along with some bandages in case anything happened – as it always did. The most important thing that she packed was something that she was definitely not going into a dangerous situation without.

The Desert Eagle had been something she hadn’t expected to find among her grandfather’s things, but she was glad she had. It was like the guns Connor and Murphy used in the Village and the ones she had learned to shoot with. Once more, she was grateful for those lessons in self-defense and firearms that she had been encouraged by the boys to take up.

The freshly carved rune stave was wrapped in a square of silk and she put that in the bag and closed it. The gun was placed in the holster she had rigged up to wear beneath her jacket. It would be easier to get to that way.

She went down to the basement and stared for a long time at the door that hadn’t been disturbed since she carved the binding rune into it. Luckily, since she had the key to the ward, she didn’t have to obliterate the rune from the door completely. All she had to do was cover it up with a thin wash of paint that could be easily rinsed off – or draw a line through it with chalk to unlock it.

The chalk would be easier to get rid of to work the rune again and would work in less time than it would take to wash the paint off. Saying a small prayer that she had learned in the Village and touching her lips to the cross pendant that she always wore around her neck, Jenny lifted up her piece of chalk and drew a carefully straight vertical line through the rune.

She felt the power of that other world pushing against her almost as soon as she opened the door. Steeling herself, she took a step into the Shadow World and then another. Not wanting anything to get free and into her world again, she reached back and pulled the door shut. Turning sideways so she could see anything coming up from the depths of the darkness at her, she drew the binding rune in chalk on this side of the door. Now, they could not use this door to get out.

If she ran out of time, though, neither could she.

Jenny swallowed hard and then continued walking forward into the darkness until she was engulfed on every side.

Jenny Thornton had returned to the Shadow World.

 

Losing Jenny so suddenly was not high on the list of things the twins enjoyed. When she never showed up at the store, they had started looking for her. They went to her art store and even to her old room – she spent more time in their room usually – but no one answered at either place. They broke into Jenny’s room, but what they found there didn’t reassure them of anything. Jenny’s stuff was gone. Her clothing, her art supplies, her other knick knacks and jewelry were all gone. Remembering some of the stories they’d heard, Connor opened up his messenger and was upset to find that Jenny’s name was gone from the list.

She wasn’t just lost, the Village had taken her back to her world.

“They took her from us, Connor,” Murphy said later that night when they were drinking in their room.

He was sitting on the bed they had all shared most nights, holding that stuffed bear that Jenny had loved so much. It had been such a simple thing, to win her that bear from one of those festival booths, but the look in her eyes when they brought it to her had made them think it wasn’t a simple thing to her at all.

Connor was sitting at the table, playing with one of Jenny’s many sketches that had stayed behind while he was tapping the ashes from his cigarette into the really outrageously artsy ash tray Jenny had made for them.

“We’ll find her again, Murph,” Connor finally responded when he thought he had his voice under control again. “We’ll get out of here and we’ll go to California and find her.”

“Shit, we don’t even know where in California she was from.”

“We’ll find her, Murphy. She’s ours and she wanted to be ours.”

“There’s not even a way out of here until this fucking place lets us leave. By the time we get out of here and go back home, Jenny could have already lived her life and died. You’ve heard what people say about going back to your own place and time without any time passing while you’re here.”

“She’s not dead, Murphy,” Connor said, his voice coming out harsher than he’d attended. “She’ll be waiting for us.”

It wasn’t the idea of her growing old and dying that was weighing heavily on Connor’s mind. He was thinking more about one of the things Jenny had let slip to them when they first met.

_”It was something I started doing after the kidnapping.”_

She had told him that it happened before she was brought to the Village, but she had also told them that those responsible hadn’t got what they deserved.

Fuck. What if the Village took Jenny back to where she would have to go through that again, and she was hurt even worse?

“Fuck that!” he burst out, slamming his beer bottle on the table. Murphy looked up and frowned at him. He had been startled by Connor’s outburst because his mind had been thinking about how different things were going to be without Jenny here with them.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Jenny.”

“Yeah, well I’m upset that she’s gone, too.” Murphy said, lighting up a cigarette, “But I’m not slamming things around and coming close to wasting perfectly good beer.”

Connor turned to look at him.”Do you remember what Jenny told us that first morning she woke up with us?”

“She told us a lot of things, Connor.”

“About her art, what caused her to start drawing shit.”

Murphy looked blank for a moment and then recollection started filling his eyes. “The kidnapping.”

“Right. She also told us that those responsible for it hadn’t gotten what they deserved but they would. Did she ever tell us how long before she brought here she had gone through the kidnapping?”

“Not that I can think of. Every time the topic came up, she would change it to a different conversation. She didn’t like talking about it.”

“So it could have happened right before she was brought here. Which means if some of the stories about how this place works –“

“—She could have been given right back to whomever kidnapped her and hurt her! Fuck. Shit.” He started pacing the room. “Connor, fuck.”

“I know, Murph.” He got up to walk over to his brother. He went up behind him and wrapped his arms around him, pulling him closer to him. “We’ll find her and we’ll make sure she’s all right.”

“And take her home with us. She’s ours, she belongs to us. We all three said so.” Murphy said fiercely.

Connor nodded. “Yes. She’s our Jenny-girl.” He kissed the back of Murphy’s neck. “We’ll fix this. It’s what we do.”

“She’s strong, but she must be scared,” Murphy murmured. “We promised her she’d stay safe with us. That we would always be there for her.”

“And we’ll keep that promise. One way or another, we’ll get out of this place and find her, Murphy.” Connor’s voice hardened. “I promise.”

“Fuck yeah we’ll find her.” Murphy agreed. They were twins and they had the same thoughts and plans most of the time.

Jenny was theirs and they were hers. Nothing was going to break that bond – not even some strange Village and world travelling.

Four months after Jenny disappeared, the Village decided to send the McManus twins back to their own world. They took care of what they needed to, and then set out to find their way to California and to Jenny.

It wasn’t hard for them to find Jenny’s family in California. After all, her last name was an unusual one. The problem was that Jenny no longer lived there.

They did their best to look for clues to her whereabouts, but no one in the town seemed to know where she had moved away to. They were about to head back to South Boston to see if any of their contacts could help them find their girl when they were approached by a young man outside of a bar. It was Connor who noticed they were being watched, first, and he nudged Murphy as the guy approached them.

“I hear that you’re looking for Jenny,” the man started, his gray eyes moving between the two of them.

“What if we are?” Connor asked in an even tone. “What business is it of yours?” Was this guy some ex boyfriend or something that was going to try to threaten them or some kind of shit?

“Are you Connor and Murphy?”

Murphy stiffened. “Who are you and how do you know our names?”

“My name is Zach,” he responded. “I’m Jenny’s cousin. Before she moved away, Jenny talked to me a great deal about Connor and Murphy.” He smiled faintly. “She knew that I was one of the few that would believe her about the village and her life there.”

Connor and Murphy exchanged a look between them. “The fuck?” Murphy finally voiced the question that both of them were thinking.

Zach pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to Connor. As Connor began to unfold it, Murphy moved closer so that he could see what it was, too.

It was a perfect pencil drawing of the two of them. There was no question in their minds that the artist was Jenny. They had seen enough of her work when they were together to identify it.

“Where did you get this?” Connor finally demanded as he looked at Zach.

“Jenny gave it to me before she left,” Zach responded.

“Is she all right?” Murphy’s eyes were full of concern even though his face remained blank.

“As all right as she could be, I guess,” Zach said. “She’s been missing the two of you like crazy.”

“Where is she?” Connor and Murphy were prepared to do whatever they had to do in order to find Jenny. If Zach wouldn’t tell them willingly, then there were ways they could use in order to get the information they needed.

“Pennsylvania,” Zach sighed, shaking his head. “She’d been looking for you guys ever since she was brought back home. When it got to be too much for her to not be able to get back to you, she decided to take over the ownership of our grandfather’s house. She thought that she would work to repay a debt while she was trying to find her way back to that crazy village of yours.”

“Repay a debt?” Murphy was very interested in this topic of conversation. Connor was as well.

“What kind of debt?”

Zach peered at them for a long moment. “Years ago, Jenny was pretty much kidnapped. I mean, she went into the Shadow World of her own choice, but that was because it had already caused the death of one of her friends and the lives of two others were at risk. While she was there, she freed the soul of her grandfather and the two guys who had tried to mug her. When she did that, the Shadow Men tried to keep her in exchange for the souls she freed.”

“Keep Jenny?” Connor really didn’t like the sound of that.

“Yeah. She was going to stay in order to make sure all of us went free and were safe,” Zach explained. “Because sometimes, Jenny is just _too_ good. They were going to take her and one of her friends ended up being killed because he was protecting her and trying to make sure she got out of the Shadow World alive.” 

“What happened to Jenny after that?”

“Tom and Dee got her out of there and home – but she swears she spent a couple of years in that Village. To us, the death and getting out of there happened within a matter of seconds; to Jenny, she lived a different lifetime in those few seconds.”

“You said she was in Pennsylvania, now?”

Zach nodded. “Yes. I think she decided she needed to be away from here and try to pull herself together away from people who thought that maybe she was losing her mind,”

“Jenny’s not crazy,” Murphy growled, taking a step toward Zach. Connor grabbed his arm, but his face was stony.

“I never said she was,” Zach said patiently. “I just know how she felt when no one believed her. Even her two best friends thought that maybe her story about the village was a reaction to what happened in the Shadow World and her almost dying and being brought back to life.”

“Jenny never told us anything about her dying.”

“Yeah, well, would you have believed her?” Zach challenged.

Murphy made a growling noise. “We know Jenny’s not a liar.”

Zach raised his hands in an appeasing gesture. “She came close to drowning in a mine shaft when she was trying to rescue her two friends that had been kidnapping. Then, because she knew a little rune magic, she turned the water to ice. Instead of drowning, she froze to death.”

“Our Jenny-girl knows magic?”

“She was just beginning to get a grasp of it because of everything that happened. Once she came back from that Village of yours, she dove into learning it.” Zach sighed. “Our grandfather – who got us into all the trouble to begin with – was a sorcerer and Jenny knew magic was in her blood. I think she was going to try to open a doorway from our world to that Village.”

“How do we find her?”

“I can give you the address.”

“Why are you so willing to help two strange men find your cousin?” Connor was suspicious about how easily Zach was giving them information on the whereabouts of Jenny. (Not that they wouldn’t have found a way to _persuade_ him to help them find Jenny, but this was almost too easy.)

“Because she told me that one day you would come looking for her and she wanted me to help you.” He gestured to the drawing that Connor was still holding. “She gave me that so I would know who you were.”

Connor looked at Murphy for a long moment, the same feelings he had were reflected in his brother’s eyes.

“Tell us where to find her.”

 

When Jenny got into the Shadow World, she wasn’t exactly sure where she needed to go to accomplish her task. She shifted her bag on her shoulder and kept walking, hoping that she would come up with an idea or stumble over an answer for her questions while she was walking.

She lost track of how much time she had been walking when she came across what looked like an amusement park.

_So that’s how this is going to be._

She had been brought back to the place of her nightmares. The Shadow World version of the amusement park she had once loved was where so many questions had been answered and so much blood had been shed.

Swallowing, she looked around, almost afraid of what else she would find. Her hand tightened on the strap of her bag when she saw the outline of the pirate ship. The pirate ship was where she had saved Tom and Zach. It was also where she had almost been taken by the Shadow Men and where Julian had died while trying to save her.

Swallowing hard, she pulled the carved wooden pendant from around her neck and started walking towards the carved crow’s nest basket of the ship. Looking around to get an indication of who – or what – might be hunting her, she began climbing up the deck of the ship to reach the crow’s nest. Once she was safely in the basket, she took the wooden necklace she had carved and hung it on a piece of what looked like an old nail. She pulled the silver folding knife out of her pocket and made a deep slash in the palm of her hand and up her forearm, then pressed her bleeding hand to the runes craved in the wood of the pendant. After a long moment, she pulled back and fumbled for the bandage she had readied in her other hoodie pocket. Wrapping it around her wound, she used her teeth to tie off a knot in it. If she was right, she wouldn’t have much time to see to her hand before she was forced to fight.

After the bandage was as secure as she could make it, she shifted her bag on her shoulder and ran for the exit of the crow’s nest and then along the deck of the ship. She heard a small explosion behind her and then saw a bright light out of the corner of her eye as she ran. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder. If she was right in her studies, then that light and displacement of air signaled Julian’s return to existence.

It would also serve as a beacon to every Shadow Man that was in the vicinity and alert them that something had changed in their world without their approval or involvement. It would also mean that she was in big trouble if she couldn’t get to the door that led back to her world before they converged on her.

 

She was about five miles -- she was guessing -- from her destination when something attacked her from the back, sending her rolling along the ground. Coming up to her feet with the knife in her hand, she turned to see what had attacked her.

To her horror, the Shadow Man that was facing her was the one with the horrible face and the deadly looking crocodile teeth. When he saw Jenny recognized him, his leathery lips stretched into a smile.

“Time has only increased your beauty and the taste of your essence,” he said in a voice that reminded Jenny far too much of nails on a chalkboard. “I knew that we would find you again.”

“You didn’t find anything,” Jenny said with as much bravado as she could muster when she realized that others of the Shadow Men were gathering. “I came here to repay a debt.”

“A debt that we are very pleased to collect upon,” the Crocodile man said to her, stepping closer. “You should have stayed and accepted your fate the last time, pretty. We will not be as gentle now as we might have been.”

Jenny swallowed hard, trying not to let him frighten her any more than she already was. “The debt I owe is not to you but to another.”

“He was unmade. The dead cannot help you escape your fate, pretty.”

“I am master of my own fate,” she said with determination in her tone – even with as frightened as she was of these creatures. She showed them the gold ring from Julian. “It was his last gift to me and I will free myself from what you have planned.”

“There is no escape for you open this time, pretty,” Crocodile Man said as others started to circle around her. “You robbed us of what was ours once and now it is time for us to collect on the debt. You should not have entered this domain if you were planning on staying free of your debt to this world.”

It was Jenny who first noticed the silvery blue light getting closer to the gathering. She had no doubt who it was and when the explosion came, she was the only one that shielded her eyes and dove to the ground in an attempt to escape Julian’s fury.

“You were unmade!” Crocodile Man sputtered as Jenny did her best to crawl backwards from what might happen next. “You have no power; are only a whisper of leftover memory that hasn’t dissipated yet.”

“Do I look unmade?” Julian demanded. “Do you hear me whispering? I have been reborn with a power you do not comprehend and will not understand. In truth, I did not understand it, myself, until the very end.” The smile that Julian gave those that were trying to surround him was mocking. “I did say that no one was to touch what is mine.” Julian pointed his finger at Jenny and blue fire erupted from his hand.

Power shot towards Jenny and as she felt the power encircling her, she felt another kind of power pushing against her. Trying to stand on her own feet, she felt an icy hand on her neck as she was pulled suddenly closer to the Crocodile Man.

“I do not know how you did this,” he hissed directly into Jenny’s face, causing bile to rise in her throat at the smell of decay wafting over her. “But you will die a thousand deaths and scream for oblivion before we are finished with you.”

“That doesn’t really work for me,” Jenny gasped out as he was squeezing her throat, and brought her knife up to stab him in the side of the neck.

Jenny knew the blow wouldn’t kill him, she didn’t have a Rune engraved on the knife to kill him -- and only magic could kill magic. What she hadn’t counted on was that it would anger him enough that he would throw her away from him. She hit a tree with enough momentum that she was sure she felt something break in her shoulder and she dropped to a heap on the ground beneath it, She was struggling to get her breath back and do an assessment of the damage when she saw other Shadow Men coming towards her.

This was going to be bad. This was going to be very, very bad.

When no one answered their knocks on the door, Connor and Murphy looked at each other. They knew they had the right address, because they had mapped it out with Zach back in California. They had even been given pictures of the house by Zach. Connor waited at the front door while Murphy looked around the house to see if anything looked out of place. He returned to the front door, shaking his head.

“There’s nothing in the back,” Murphy said as he came back up the steps.

“She’s in trouble, then,” Connor responded. “Zach said she didn’t have class on Fridays and today is Friday.”

“Then we need to get in to her before she gets herself hurt going back to Hell.”

“You don’t think she would really try to find a way to get there without back up, do you, Connor?”

Connor sighed and dropped his cigarette, stomping it out with his shoe. “Who was she going to get to go with her, Murph? From what her cousin said, no one believed her about the Village and there’s no one that she could ask to go with her. She wouldn’t ask anyone to do that. She’d try to take this job on all by herself.”

Murphy nodded. “Guess we’d better go inside and see what our girl has gotten herself into, then.”

Connor reached into his pocket and pulled out the key that Zach had given them. Fitting it into the lock, he turned it, unlocking the door. He listened for a moment before he pushed the door open and he and his brother stepped into the house. Shutting the door behind them, they waited in the hallway for their eyes to adjust.

The house was quiet and they pulled their guns out so that they wouldn’t be caught off guard by anything coming out of the shadows. They went from room to room, examining each one as they did.

“Connor, come look at this,” Murphy called from the basement.

When Connor came downstairs, he found Murphy walking around the basement and looking at the different paintings and sketches that were all over the place. Most of them seemed to be of the twins and the Village.

“Well, if we ever had any doubt where Jenny’s feelings were concerned, these pictures sure would change our minds.” Connor commented, shaking his head.

“I never doubted her feelings for us,” Murphy said hotly, giving his brother a shove.

“I didn’t say you did,” Connor snapped at him. “I’m just saying.”

“Well don’t. Don’t say things like that.” HIs brother growled. “Fuck.”

“Whatever,” Connor muttered, shaking his head. He continued to search the basement and stopped in front of a door. There was a strange design carved into the wood, and the symbol had a slashing mark through it. “Damn it, Jenny-girl.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I found the doorway to Jenny’s Hell.”

Murphy uttered a curse and made his way to Connor’s side. “I was hoping that Zach guy was wrong about this.”

His brother shook his head. “Jenny felt she owed a debt to someone and she would have done everything she could to pay it.” He looked at Murphy. “We know all about that.”

“She should have waited for us.”

“It wasn’t like she knew when we were going to show up, now did she?”

“All right, all right,” Murphy conceded. “Are we going in?”

“Of course we’re going in. Jenny needs us.”

The brothers readied their guns and then opened the door. The blast of cold caught them off guard, but they pushed their way through it. When they stepped into the darkness, Murphy cursed under his breath. It was cold in this place and he didn’t like the way it felt. Jenny hadn’t gone into much detail about what happened to her when she was trapped in this world.

Connor looked around, trying to decide which way they should go. It wasn’t like they could see much until their eyes adjusted. It also didn’t help that they had no map to follow. Murphy started to say something to his brother when they heard a faint scream, followed by a gunshot.

_Jenny._

The name wasn’t said out loud, but as they looked at each other, it was an acknowledgement that they both were thinking the same thing. They were twins and some things they just _knew_ at the same time. There was no outward indication of a decision made, but the two of them started running in the direction of the scream.

Jenny wasn’t aware that her screams had alerted anyone since she didn’t expect anyone else human to be in the Shadow World. She was backed against a tree and the Crocodile Man was now missing half of his face. The wound made him look even more terrifying and Jenny was trying not to let blind fear take control of her. It was hard not to give in to pain and fear when she could feel her own blood dripping down her arms. The Crocodile Man had bitten her shoulder while she was fighting him and that was the moment she remembered the gun in her bag. When she fired the gun into his face, she ended up being thrown into the tree where she was standing now. Her head was reeling from pain, but she couldn’t let them see how wounded she was or it would be all over for her.

All around her, shapes were forming out of the darkness – the same shapes that had colored her nightmares for so long. Her hands were shaking as she pointed the gun at first one target and then the other. She didn’t know what had happened to Julian after his first attack on his brethren and she wasn’t holding out the hope that he was going to be able to do anything in time to help her. If he had come back weak and had to wait to anything before he was back up at full strength, she was pretty sure that the other Shadow Men were not going to let him have time to get up to full strength.

No, right now, it looked like Jenny was very much on her own in this fight. While she knew that it was going to end up being a fight that she couldn’t win, she wasn’t going to make it easy on her enemies to take her. In fact, she was determined to make it as difficult as possible.

She needed to buy herself some time to come up with an escape plan.

With the hand not holding the gun, she reached into the pocket of her jacket, trying to think. Her hand brushed a worn velvet bag and it gave her an idea. She was nowhere near as practiced as her grandfather had been, but she did _know_ a lot more than she had a few years ago.

She carefully, quietly, opened the bag in her jacket with one hand and started feeling around for the item she was looking for. When her finger brushed the sought after shape, she almost let out a cry of relief.

She took quick stock of her situation. She was pinned against a tree and she would need to move a little bit away from that if she wanted her plan to give her more than a little help. Forcing life into her frozen legs, Jenny somehow found the courage to step closer to the fearsome Crocodile Man. She casually let the hand holding the gun fall to her side as she took another step towards him.

The Crocodile Man smiled, his teeth glistening with both saliva and Jenny’s blood. “Good girl,” he hissed. “Give in to the inevitable and stop fighting me, pretty, and maybe I’ll change my mind and let your death be easy when it finally comes.”

_Not a chance in Hell,_ Jenny thought.

Carefully making her face blank, Jenny looked at him and did her best to keep from letting the cold terror seize her mind again. When she was only a finger’s breadth from him, her right hand shot up from her side.

“ **KAUN!** ” Jenny’s screamed command was followed by her hand drawing the rune’s symbol in the air with the rune she held in her hand.

Her hand grew very hot for a moment, but Jenny just held on even tighter. Even as the Crocodile Man snarled and reached to grab her, hot white light shot out from her hand. The light was so bright that Jenny had to shield her eyes and step back. Peeking through her lashes, she saw the shadowy image of the rune she had called forth hang in the air for a moment and then there was a whoosh of air as the light from the rune settled. It was bright as the sun and the Shadow Men that had been converging on her all shrieked and fell back into the darkness as fast as they could.

When her eyes adjusted to the glare and the shrieks faded away, Jenny took stock of her situation. It wasn’t the best, but it was at least a tiny bit better than her previous situation of being stuck against the tree. There was about a 200 foot diameter of light around her current position. From learning the Runes and her last experience in the Shadow World, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to use that same Rune again for awhile.

Which was a pity, because then she could have just kept casting it until she made it back to the doorway that would return her to her own world. By the rules of the Game and the laws of this world, she couldn’t cheat to get herself to safety.

No, she’d just have to get as close to the edge of light as she could and come up with something that would let her keep herself alive for a little bit longer. She had no doubt that the Crocodile Man would end up taking her, but she needed to stay out of his reach and alive long enough to know if all of this had been worth it.

Had she been able to repay the debt to Julian? Would he be alive again, or had the attack on the Shadow Men when he first came into being been too much for him? Was he out there being himself – or was he back towards the pirate ship, dying again?

She had to keep fighting and stay alive until she could answer that question.

She would never get to see Connor and Murphy again, but the last thing she would ever do is shame them by failing to fulfill a debt. It didn’t matter to her that they would probably never know what she did and what happened, but it mattered that _she_ would know what she did and didn’t do. She was no coward and she was going to see this thing through with her last breath.

From the glittering eyes that were tracking her from the edges of her protected circle, her last breath was definitely what these things were planning on taking from her. Jenny swallowed, backing away from the edge of the circle as she tried to decide what she was going to do.

Home lay in one direction, but the pirate ship where she had left Julian’s stave and had seen him explode in anger was in the exact opposite direction.

_The completely opposite direction._

She could almost hear Dee’s voice in her head demanding to know exactly what she thought she was doing. Dee hadn’t understood before this, so how could she understand any of this now? Wasn’t hearing the voices of people that weren’t around a sign of madness?

What if she had gone mad long ago and all of this was just an illusion that her mind had conjured?

She shook her head. Even if most of this could be blamed on hallucinations, the wounds she had on her shoulder, neck and face were not illusions. She could feel the blood from where she had been bitten dripping down her arm and the wooziness that accompanied blood loss was also very real.

Those realities helped her make her first decision about what she needed to do now.

She backed up away from the edge of darkness and closer to the middle of the circle of light she had created. She didn’t know how long the magic would last, but she was pretty sure that it would last long enough for her to do some bandaging of her shoulder. It was the more serious of her wounds and if she could slow the flow of blood, it would be helpful for the situation she was in.

She heard the creatures trying to follow her, but the light was just too damn bright for them.

Moving to the tree, she gingerly removed her backpack from her back, trying not to cry out in pain as the straps grazed the deep teeth marks left in her shoulder by the Crocodile Man. The bag came off and she dropped it at her feet, trying not to panic at the sight of her blood on the straps. She was lucky that he hadn’t been able to rip a chunk out of her shoulder before she fought back with the knife. The wound could have been so much worse.

_Would be worse_ if she couldn’t get out of here.

Crouching down next to her bag, she unzipped it and reached in with one hand to take out the extra shirt she had packed. She didn’t have scissors, but her knife would make short work of it. She balanced her gun across her knees as she did her best to slice strips from her shirt. She wouldn’t win any awards for the straightness of the strips, but at least they were serviceable.

Holding one end of the cloth between her teeth, she wrapped the wound as best as she could. It was the tying the knot in the cloth that gave her the most trouble. It wasn’t done as tightly as she wanted it to be, but it would have to do. If she didn’t get out of here and back home, then it wouldn’t matter how tightly she had tied the knot.

Once she was done with that, she used a scrap of cloth to clean some of the blood off of her face and neck. Blood would make it easier for any of these bastards to track her and she was going to make it as difficult for them as she could.

She wrinkled her nose at the bloodied cloth and decided she was going to have to leave it here by the tree. Putting it in her backpack or jacket and keeping it with her would defeat the purpose of not letting them track her blood.

“Here, pretty pretty…”

The hissing voice of her attacker caused Jenny to jerk her head and peer into the shadows. She could just make out the teeth of the Crocodile Man and had to fight to keep herself from shaking.

“No,” she told herself with determination. “No. You are not letting fear of these things beat you, Jenny-girl. You’re going to beat them at their own Game and you’re going to get home safely.”

She didn’t know how likely the getting out of this place was, but she was not going to let them terrorize her until she knew if Julian was alive.

Steeling herself and drawing up all of the courage she could, she started walking in the opposite direction of home. Once or twice she touched the pendant at her neck, getting a little bit of extra strength from it.

Wherever Connor and Murphy were, she hoped their world was better than this one. She also, maybe selfishly, hoped that they hadn’t forgotten about her and how she felt about them.

 

The McManus brothers were not made for forest life. It was something that they kept cursing about to themselves even as they were rushing in the direction they had heard Jenny’s scream come from.

“That scream was too fucking close for it to be taking this damn long for us to reach her,” Murphy cursed as they went over another fallen tree.

“Maybe this place is like the Village and it can change how far and near things are,” Connor pointed out.

“Don’t even say that.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because if it is doing that, it means that we may not get to Jenny until it’s too late to save her.”

Connor stopped in his tracks and glared at his brother. “And you don’t say that.”

“What?”

“We’re not going to be too late to save her,” Connor spit out. “Not after coming all this way.”

“I don’t think that, Connor,” Murphy said with an angry curse. “It just wouldn’t surprise me if this place was fucking with our heads and you’re the one who brought that up, not me.” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “Look, we can’t let this place get to us. We don’t fight with each other because that will take up time Jenny might need.”

“When did you become so smart?”

“I’ve always been the smart one,” Murphy scoffed. “Now, let’s find our girl and get the fuck out of this hell hole.”

They started walking again, listening for any hint of something that would lead them to Jenny.

“We should have asked her more about what she went through,” Connor said after a few minutes of walking.

“She didn’t want to talk about it, Connor,” Murphy responded without looking at him. “Every time it was brought up, she looked so scared.”

“We should have pushed her to tell us. It might have helped.”

“None of us were even thinking about what would happen when we left the Village. We liked being together too much to think beyond what we had.”

Connor sighed. “I know, but maybe if we had pushed her, we could have done something to prepare or to keep all of this from happening.”

“Stop trying to be a philosopher, Connor,” Murphy said quietly. “That’s not who we are. We took as good care of her as we could. We protected her. We taught her to fight and we taught her to use a gun. From the sound of it, she remembered that training.”

“Unless what we heard was someone else shooting at her.”

“Shut. Up.” Murphy was in a full temper now and he was in no mood to listen to any more of the bad things that could be happening to Jenny. “The scream came before the gunshot, which means that it was Jenny doing the shooting. If she was the one being shot at, she would have screamed after that. Besides, the sound that we heard after the shot was no sound our Jenny could have made.”

Murphy had a point and Connor nodded. 

That growl and grinding of _something_ after the gun went off was not the sound of Jenny. It had sounded far too large and creepy for it to have been her. What he was trying not to think about was what that kind of monster could do to their little girlfriend. If it was as large as it sounded, there was no way that she could defeat it alone.

As if they were thinking the same thought, both brothers smiled into the darkness.

It was a good thing that Jenny wasn’t alone in this place, then.

 

When Jenny reached the end of the circle of light, she swallowed thickly. She knew that somewhere in the darkness, the Shadow Men were hunting her. She had managed to confuse them a few times by sticking to the trees and then rolling around in the bushes. She didn’t know if they tracked her by scent, or what, but she had decided she was going to do everything she could to make catching her difficult on them.

The dirt and leaves that now coated her wounds didn’t feel too good, but she would have the chance to fix that if she got out of here. If she didn’t escape, well then, it wouldn’t make any difference if she caused an infection. She wouldn’t be alive long enough to worry about her physical body.

Looking around her, she let her eyes travel up the trunk of the tree nearest to her. Her eyes followed a line from that tree to the nearest tree outside of the ring of light.

_It could work,_ her brain told her even as she started toward the tree. 

They wouldn’t be expecting her to try to travel back to the pirate ship via the trees. They would be hunting her trail on the ground. She could jump from tree to tree. It was an insane idea, but this whole place was insane. The Crocodile Man and his brethren would be expecting her to do the safe thing; the logical thing.

The _human_ thing.

She wasn’t playing by the rules of their Game, though. She was playing by the rules of survival and those rules said that you gave yourself every advantage that you could.

At the base of the tree, she opened her backpack and pulled out a long piece of material left over from her cutting her shirt into strips. She wrapped it around her waist as best as she could and knotted it firmly. Pulling out another strip, she tied one end of it to the one about her waist and then wrapped one end around the barrel of her gun. If she fell, she wasn’t losing the damn gun. The gun and the Runes were the two useful weapons she had right now.

Once she was sure the gun was secure, she closed up the backpack and started climbing the tree. She knew not to climb too high because then the branches wouldn’t be strong enough to support her weight. When she had climbed up as far as she dared, she pressed her forehead against the tree, trying to steady her breath and her anxiety.

Inching out on a branch, she moved slowly and carefully. What she wouldn’t give right now to have the acrobatic ability of some of those female action heroes. They probably wouldn’t be having to fight off a panic attack as they crept across tree branches over the head of monsters wanting to kill and torture their souls for all time.

“Stop that, Jenny,” she hissed to herself. “Don’t dwell on what might be. Just get your ass to the next step.”

Swallowing hard, she reached out for the closest branch of her destination. The branch appeared thick and she thought that she could swing herself to that tree. Fighting back a cry of pain as she lifted her wounded arm, she grabbed the branches right above her head. She used them for balance as she walked along her current branch. When she heard the slight sound of creaking beneath her feet, she knew that she had to move _now_.

There was no easy way to do this as anything she did was going to cause trauma to her already injured arm. She was going to have to use her injured arm as the anchor point to swing her body out so she could grab the other tree with her free hand. It was just like using the monkey bars on a playground.

Of course, she had never tried using the monkey bars on a playground right after she had been bitten by a crocodile creature.

Taking a deep breath, Jenny bit her lip to keep from screaming in pain as she swung off of her wounded arm to reach for the other tree. Tears were sliding down her face when her other hand grabbed the opposite branch. Holding on with all of her strength, she swung her lower half up so that she could scramble up onto the branch. Once she was stable, Jenny worked her way slowly to the trunk of the tree. Pressing her face against the bark, she muffled the cries that she was making.

There was no way that she could do that again. She would need to come up with another plan because her arm couldn’t take that kind of stress for a second time.

Jenny pulled her trembling arm against her body as she tried to make her tears stop. Crying wasn’t going to get her out of this mess. There was no other way around it. She was going to have to take her chances on the ground. Luckily, if her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her, she should be almost at the pirate ship by now. Once there, she could find out if Julian had survived coming back and being attacked almost immediately. If he had survived, then her debt to him was erased and she could focus on trying to survive long enough to get out of this place and back home.

If he hadn’t survived, then all of this bloodshed and pain will have been for nothing and she would have to go through all of this again.

The idea of having to start from the beginning all over again almost took the fight out of her.

Almost.

Making sure she had all of her gear with her, Jenny swallowed and started making her way down to the ground. It was slower than her climbing had been, because now she was actively having to favor her damaged arm. Tears were making their way unbidden down her cheeks, but she couldn’t wipe them away right now. She was focused completely on getting out of this tree before anything worse happened.

Once she was finally on the ground, she allowed herself a moment to lean against the tree and try to take a few deep, calming breaths. She had made it this far, she could make it even farther if she was able to keep herself together. If she could keep the pain from overwhelming her, then she could do this.

She started walking in the direction of the pirate ship and the amusement park when several things happened all at once.

The area lit up with a cold blue light and Jenny was forced to duck her head in surprise – hoping that she wasn’t wrong about the cause of the light. At the same time, she heard a gunshot and a voice that she _knew_ she had to be imagining.

“Jenny!”

“Murphy?” Her voice caught and Jenny wasn’t sure she could believe her eyes, but then another figure came out of the darkness behind him. “Connor?” She shook her head and closed her eyes, trying to clear her vision before she opened them again. No, the two men were still standing there, guns drawn.

Jenny took a wobbly step in their direction, opening her mouth to greet them. Her greeting turned into a scream of pain as she was jerked off of her feet by her wounded arm. She smelled her tormentor before her back slammed against him.

“Did you think you were escaping that easily, pretty pretty?”

Jenny’s breath was knocked out of her, so she couldn’t respond to him, but there were two angry voices that she heard quite clearly.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Get off of her, you fucker!”

Jenny wanted to tell them to shoot her attacker, but she knew that they wouldn’t take that chance with her being held in front of it like a shield.

“She’s belongs to the Shadow Men,” The Crocodile Man hissed as he drew his tongue along Jenny’s face, causing her to gag. “She took what was ours before and she owed us. We’re going to enjoy tearing her apart and feasting on her soul. The good ones last longer.”

Jenny shook her head minutely. “I saved them,” she said with a hint of defiance in her voice. “I rescued them from your torture.”

“They were ours. You broke the rules.” The Crocodile Man shook her, causing her to make a sound of pain that had the McManus brothers stepping forward. “If you don’t want me to tear her apart right now, you won’t come any closer.”

Jenny saw Connor and Murphy exchange a look and she knew they were going to do something that might cause them to get hurt by the Crocodile Men and the other Shadow Men that had started to gather around her. Before she could warn them not to take any risks, the ground started to shake and a large explosion threw everyone off their feet.

She recognized the sensation of ice cold fury and she had to smile. 

_Julian had returned._

“I thought that I made it rather clear that none of you were to touch what was mine.”

Jenny tried not to smile. Even a few years of nonexistence had not dampened Julian’s attitude about her.

“She doesn’t belong to you,” the Crocodile Man hissed. “She broke the rules. You were destroyed.”

“And yet, here she is, being threatened by you and here I am,” Julian said as he stalked toward the older of his brethren. “I don’t feel destroyed. Do I look destroyed?”

“What the fuck is going on here,” Connor demanded as he got to his feet.

Julian didn’t even look at them and Jenny was staring at Julian with a hint of triumph in her eyes.

“It worked,” she whispered faintly. “It worked.”

Julian turned to look at Jenny and shook his head. “You were supposed to be free of this place and staying out of trouble.”

“You weren’t supposed to die to save me,” Jenny countered, feeling very tired. She closed her eyes, but opened them again when she felt someone’s lap beneath her head. “Murphy.”

Connor was crouched next to the two of them. “Jenny-girl, what have you gotten yourself into?”

“I owed a debt,” she explained. “I had to see it through.” She swallowed. Pain was starting to get the best of her and she was just so damn tired. “How did you find me?”

“Zach,” Murphy responded, giving Connor a look of concern over how pale Jenny was looking. “He told us about the door in your basement.”

“Not that I don’t think this is oh so very sweet,” Julian said sarcastically. “But who are the two of you and why are you here?” He looked down at Jenny, and she could see the fury increase in his eyes when he saw how battered she was. “Neither one of these boys are Tommy.”

Jenny managed to shake her head. “Tommy is long gone. Connor and Murphy McManus.”

“There’s a story to be heard here, Jenny.”

“A bit of a long one,” Jenny agreed.

“Magic Village kidnapped us, we got together, Jenny is our girlfriend.”

Or, as Murphy just pointed out, perhaps not all that long at all.

“You were kidnapped?” Jenny didn’t think it was possible for Julian’s voice to get any colder, but it did.

“Not by the Shadow Men, Julian,” she whispered, closing her eyes again. “Something else. And when it brought me back, I was different.”

“Shh,” Connor said, running a hand over her hair. “Save your strength until we can get you to a doctor, Jenny.”

Julian turned his attention to Murphy. “What makes you think I’m going to let the two of you take her anywhere? She’s mine, has been since I first saw her light when she was five years old.”

Murphy gave him a disgusted look. “You’ve been after her since she was a baby? That’s some sick shit.”

“I protected her,” Julian growled.

“You stalked her,” Connor fired back. “Stalked her and tormented her.”

“I was unmade keeping her safe from my kin.”

“Who brought her to their attention in the first place?”

Julian gave Connor a smile that was not at all friendly. “I can just take her from you, you know. This is my domain so I can destroy you both and keep Jenny here.”

There was the sound of a hammer being drawn back and all three men returned their attention to Jenny. “You won’t hurt them if you want me to stay alive, Julian.”

While Connor and Murphy had been arguing with Julian, Jenny had moved her gun and now the barrel rested against the side of her ribcage.

“You wouldn’t. You are too bright of a living soul.” Julian stepped forward and then stopped. It was clear from his face that he didn’t want to startle her but also that he was shocked that she was even threatening him in this way.

“Are you willing to bet on that, Julian? Are you willing to start a new Game with me on just your opinion alone? Because I will win. Again. You don’t know what I’ve seen and been through since you were killed. If you harm Connor or Murphy in even the smallest way, I will pull this trigger. At this range, you know that I won’t survive the shot.”

Jenny didn’t dare look at Connor or Murphy as she spoke with Julian. She knew Murphy could possibly try to take the gun from her – she didn’t have the strength to fight back. But she also knew that to protect them from this world, she would take her own life here in the Shadow World. She knew that according to their faith, suicide was a sin and she might lose their love, but she would rather she lose their love than they both lose their lives. She _knew_ Julian. If he decided that he could kill them and keep her, he would try it.

“Jenny,” Murphy said in a shocked voice when he saw where the gun was. “Jenny, you can’t.”

“I can and I will,” Jenny said, her voice firm even though they could all see how weak and wounded she was. “I won’t let him harm you.”

"Jenny-girl, listen to me," Connor said, focusing on her and making her look at him. "Suicide is a big sin and you'll go to Hell for sure if you do that."

"How will that be any different from the Hell I will live in knowing that he destroyed you because of me when I could have stopped it?" Jenny demanded, her voice breaking. "I couldn't stop the Village from taking me away, but I can stop Julian from taking you away."

Julian frowned, looking at Jenny with his piercing gaze. "You would do that, Jenny? Even though you know that killing yourself would rob you of their love and condemn you to hell, you would still pull that trigger to save them from me?" Jenny nodded. "What if you did it and I destroyed them because of your loss, anyway?"

"You won't," Jenny whispered. She was so damn tired and just wanted to close her eyes and let go, but she couldn't. This mattered too much and she had to see the situation through to the end. "I will have won the Game by pulling the trigger and destroying them after the fact would be against the rules. It would be cheating and you _never_ cheat, Julian. It's below the greatest Gamemaster in creation to cheat. Either way, this Game is over."

There were several tense moments as Jenny and Julian locked eyes, and then the Shadow Man finally cursed. "Damn you, Jenny Thornton. Curse you and your damn _goodness_ to hell."

"Make me pull this trigger and it will happen fast as anything, Julian."

"Don't," he shook his head, then moved, shoving Connor out of the way. When Connor went to aim his weapon, Julian bared his teeth. "Do it and she bleeds out in the time it takes me to heal myself. Your weapons have no affect on my kind."

"Jenny?"

"He won't harm me," Jenny said softly. "He's done too much to keep me alive to kill me when I'm helpless."

"Never would I wish you death, Jenny," Julian said, looking over her wounds. "I tried to remake the world for you."

"And I have repaid that debt by giving you life." She gave him a slight smile. "My debt to you ends here, Julian. You have your existence and you can do whatever with this world that you wish to. You owe fealty to no master but yourself, now. I made sure of that when I made you the new stave."

"While I'm curious to know how you managed that, this is not the time." He reached out and lifted her left arm. "This is going to hurt like hell, Jenny, and I'm sorry for it." He held her arm firmly in one hand while pressing his other palm against her inner arm a short distance above her wrist.

An icy coldness moved through Jenny and she was surrounded in blue light for several minutes. She screamed from the pain that moved from her arm and up her body, but there was no sound that came from her throat. When Julian removed his hand, Jenny collapsed back against Murphy, unconscious this time. Julian stepped back, but as Connor bent down to lift Jenny up, he froze.

"What the fuck did you do to her?!"

Standing out in stark blackness against the pale skin of Jenny's arm was the tattoo of a wolf.

Julian quirked a smile at Connor. "My Lurker. He'll protect her and keep her safe for as long as time turns in your world. She may be in love with you now, but the day will come when I summon her and she will be mine."

"Over our dead bodies," Murphy snarled, stepping up next to where Connor had finally lifted Jenny's form into his arms.

"You will be ashes at some point in time, children," Julian said with a grin. "How will you protect her and keep a claim on her love, then? She was willing to risk eternal damnation and torment to protect your lives and your existence. What would you give up for her, I wonder?" He stepped back and then gestured with his hand to the surrounding woods. "Can you promise to love her enough when the mirror doesn't change and neither does she?"

"What the fuck?" Murphy demanded.

"Stop talking in riddles, asshole," Connor ordered.

Julian laughed. "Oh, these are not riddles. The simple fact of the matter is that Jenny is mine and will always be mine. Will you still love her when time changes and while you both age, she does not? She is the Persephone to my Hades, as unchanging as the darkness that makes up the shadows. and I will come for her when the two of you no longer can stand to be with someone as beautiful as she will always be when you have both grown old and wrinkled."

Murphy started forward, but Connor stopped him with his name. "Not now, Murph. We need to get Jenny home where she belongs."

For a moment, it looked like Murphy was going to go at Julian in spite of it all, but after he tensed up for a moment, he forced his shoulders to relax. "Connor is right," Murphy agreed. "But I will see you again, fucker. Next time, you won't be able to hold Jenny's life as a shield to hide behind."

Julian shrugged carelessly. "Come back anytime you like," he taunted them. "I am always on the hunt for a new game to win and new prey to defeat." His smile faded and then the rest of him did, as well. "Now get out of my realm before I forget Jenny loves you."

“How do we know you won’t attack us once our backs are turned?” Murphy demanded.

“Because the woman you carry to safety is worth more than anything that I have.” Julian said carelessly. “Besides, I have some clean up here that I need to do. Jenny gave me the Shadow World to rule and I need to make sure it’s worthy of her.”

Connor was tired of dealing with this asshole, so he jerked his head at Murphy and they started walking back the way they had come.

“Do you think she’ll be ok?” Murphy finally asked when they had been walking for awhile.

Connor nodded immediately. “Of course she will. She’s strong, our Jenny-girl. Whatever those other monsters did to her, she’ll recover from it.”

Murphy was quiet until they reached the door and as they stepped through it and closed it behind them, he looked at the rune that was on it.

“Do you think he’ll really come and try to take her from us?”

“He can try, but we won’t let him lay a hand on her ever again.”

It was all they could say for the moment, but for the moment, it was all that needed to be said.


End file.
